Thank goodness. Theming mermaid and using it server side is such a nightmare. I had many issues trying to get it to work competently with CSS variables for dark mode / light dark. This seems way better.
Whenever I read FSF complaints I always feel like an idealistic out of touch person is writing them. There are many walled gardens that try to keep you in but GitHub is really not bad compared to most of them. It’s quite easy to move to another git provider. It’s generally free and has no ads. It offers free compute to projects in their workflows. It supports discussions in a much more readable format than email.
Yes there is telemetry and perhaps they could make you run really malicious code. If they did so, their market value would tank and no one would use it anymore, so they won’t.
If you want to block telemetry in the browser you can trivially. I don’t know why fsf makes a big deal of needing to install an extension for that. It feels like they’re entitled idealists who have been completely left out of modern software.
You do know the modern smartphone is the most technologically advanced consumer good that has ever existed? Like at no point in history has there ever been something so small, complex and intricate in the hands of so many people. The new iPhone is going to be very expensive - it’s a luxury item and marketed like that.
They can definitely make phones for $300 and you can buy a smartphone that is more powerful than the original iPhone for $50. It probably will be a bit slow running modern apps but it may possibly still be workable for a while.
It fundamentally has the same capabilities as the original iphone. You can browse the web, check your emails, watch movies, play simple games.
The only difference is that now you can play graphicially intense desktop-style games, but no one really does that. And also it has some sattelite phone functionality. The cameras are also better, the battery life is better, but it all doesnt fundamentally change the way you use it. The complexity over last year's smartphone is unnessisary.
Now that everyone in the world is basicially required to use a smartphone, the only way for big smartphone to make more revenue is to sell each consumer more smartphone per smartphone.
You're correct. Ultimately 99% of the stuff you do on a phone is identical to 10 years ago. I know exactly 0 zero phone gamers. I do know some who play, like, the pokemon trading card game.
Cameras have improved, but less than you think. Most of the improvement is in low-light, but in well lit scenes we actually sort of peaked 10 years ago. It's gotten slightly worse now, believe it nor not.
But you can't legitimately run a phone from 10 years ago, because while everything is the same, the software uses 100x as many resources. That sort of tricks people into thinking "oh it must be doing so much more!"
But... is it? Think back. Instagram 10 years ago, YouTube 10 years ago. Yeah... it's basically the same. Some argue they've regressed. I'm sure we've more than 10x the code size, but nobody sees that.
Web browsers have also gotten much more complex, but again, you won't notice it. We have a lot more fringe web APIs like webusb but like... the regular web browsing experience for 99% of tasks is identical.
I think there have been some niceities in web apis like webgpu, websocket, webrtc, PWAs. But they are limited in weird ways, and the fingerprinting has never been worse
If you can’t take the time to write an actual introduction for your library and instead delegate it to AI, why would anyone take the time to try your library out and see if it’s useful? I understand using AI to document but for the front page of your programming project it should be hand written. Maybe with some AI assistance for grammar.
I doubt it. Did you read until the end where it was discovered that the new web app this person put up was plagiarized from an open source repo? He even used the same name “Dark Hours” as the open source project. The original author called him out on it and identified a unique bug that came from his code.
It’s not great social engineering. The AI is immediately caught with malware and then tries to build social proof to get out of the issue? I think that social engineering is still for humans.
I’m not sure how GitHub accounts agreeing with each other that I’ve never seen before would result in my merging a PR without at least looking for malware. Also code review agents should really not be fooled by invisible text tricks, I would hope so at least. The bar is very low for agent harnesses right now.
Yep, in my one month paid trial I hit 300 after about 2 weeks, and I was being conscious of when I used it vs other engines. I'd probably clear 1000 if I wasn't.
Their claims of "most people don't use 300+" has an EXTREME survivorship bias. I'd happily pay the base price if it weren't so limited - maybe if I wasn't subsidizing the LLM?
It depends on how often you search to find things, how much chronically online you are etc. I do 800-1200 searches per month, and that's excluding !w etc bangs that I also heavily use.
I think people really underestimate the brand loyalty that valve has. They have consistently shown for 25+ years to strive for quality and I know I’m unlikely to get a headache if I purchase from them.
Their hardware is really top notch, I have used a steam deck LCD for years and it was not until very recently that I had a single issue with a button that was easily fixable.
Probably the purchases went down due to some people buying the steam machine. I’m surprised the article doesn’t mention that.
Also, consumers are increasingly being tapped out for literally anything and everything. The demand for the things they want still exists, but they cannot readily afford it like the could in the past. Its not like all the Steam Deck customers are buying some budget friendly alternative instead. They're simply just not spending money period.
And most potential buyers would likely prioritize buying a PC before they consider getting a Steam Deck so it’s likely even more sensitive to price increases.
Also, the market eventually gets saturated when all the gamers willing to pay 400-650 dollars for a Steam Deck already have one. That's when a company usually launches the next generation of the hardware, or reduces the prices for the current generation to widen its appeal, or both. Of course, increasing the prices while not changing the hardware (and eliminating the most affordable version) is the complete opposite of this, so it will obviously lead to a sharp decrease in sales.
I generally find Valve's software quality subpar but their ethics to be vastly superior to anyone else's. For that reason they are the only place I'll even look for games anymore. They aren't perfect but they at least don't hate me like Epic does.
What ethics do you see being superior in the company known for exposing underages to gambling? The anyone elses must be really bad guys. Yes I like my deck and I respect their contributions to gaming on linux, but Valve is no saint.
The gaming market is full of gambling. Steam has problems in that area but they're miles better than what Apple is doing. My impression of Steam is that it's a game delivery platform where some games sadly have gambling elements. My impression of the App Store is that it's a "gambling for kids" delivery platform.
I always think now it’s funny that we Hated valve when steam was first introduced. Their pioneering of always online DRM and no physical media, soon to be followed by Bethesdas horse Armour micropayment dlc. The base line has shifted soo far from the days of freely auto p2p downloading of fan made skins on map load in q3arena.
I was on steam beta, I thought it was great. No more having to dig around for patches, all my games in one place. It has its ups and downs, but I can't think of any other platform I'd rather use (though merit wise gog wins).
Yes, they basically pioneered lootboxes, they shaped and scaled microtransaction economy around randomized outcome purchases under disguise of gaming and then slapped a marketplace on top of it(to take even further cut %% nonetheless).
> I can't even picture gaben with a wispy moustache to twist evilly.
Add a 500m gigayacht to the picture, maybe it will make it easier. Or a fleet.
Also, Valve could decide at any moment what happens with your game library. Unlike GOG, where you can download and save the .exe or .dmg file, Steam can just pull the plug and make you lose all your games and money.
Wasn't that court ruling only for Australia? Valve choose to make it worldwide, that should give them some credit?
Though I always assumed they didn't want to bother making a refund system till they had to, then they figured might as well unlock the floodgates (not that I know anyone at Valve).
But the comment explicitly says the opposite, that the experience is subpar but they value the ethics more. This comment is pointing out the ethics are not so great.
No, they said the software quality is sub par. I generally agree: Steam isn't a great piece of software, but it works tolerably well and everything surrounding it makes it a better experience than any alternative I know of.
I used to agree with this sentiment. But now I think they engage in some nasty practices, like not allowing developers to list their games on other online stores at cheaper prices. That and they take a large cut (30 percent I think) Vs epic store at 12 percent as far as I can recall.
I mostly buy from gog because they give your the download to keep for life. Also I just like them. However getting their games to work on steam deck is more time consuming than just buying from steam
I'd be happy to find out that I've been misinformed but I'm pretty certain this is all true.
Valve does allow listing on other stores at other prices. They even allow you to sell Steam keys for your game on other stores for lower prices - and they earn $0 for that while still providing the infrastructure for those players to download/play.
Edit: I think for steam key sales actually you're supposed to sell for the same price as Steam, but I can't seem to find the documentatiom stating either way
Edit 2: Ah, here is something stating it "You should use Steam Keys to sell your game on other stores in a similar way to how you sell your game on Steam. It is important that you don’t give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam Key purchasers." (https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys)
However, I know many games have steam keys indeed available for cheaper on other stores. Not sure how much valve actually cares, or if they have special permission or what.
they allow selling your game on other websites, but not for substantially cheaper. Isn't this what Wolfire Games (Overgrowth, Lugaru, Receiver) sued them over?
They charge 63% for user-created items inside Fortnite as of next year. No, you don't get to build your own store inside Fortnite, but you do get to bend over to Epic's price gouging and profiteering of its own.
Steam client is pretty bad. It's slow, full of ads, inconsistent, complex ... Its only quality is that everything else is worse and that it have an interesting ecosystem and ok tier customer policies (but that's unrelated to the software).
The thing takes several seconds to start on my brand new gaming rig. Not insufferable but given its only usefulness is to list my games and start one, that's a lot.
They have a proven unwillingness over many years to do what it takes to make Steam voice chat work reliably. It seems that their objective with Steam Chat is to do just enough to ensure that all Steam item-trading communication remains on their platform (for the worthy reason of controlling scamming).
The Steam client for starters but pretty much every game they initially released since 1997 was extremely buggy. They also struggle very hard to even release much anymore. I'll give them kudos on supporting OSS and their Proton development.
I'll be interested to see what happens as more and more gamers start getting into extreme old age. The lack of right of first sale, that your many thousands of dollar catalog of beloved games & your saves kicks the bucket with you is going to be a not great look for Steam some day.
I'm also a little nervous that maybe Valve works on getting the anti-cheat solution improved for Steam hardware, but the rest of Linux gets left behind. Steam has such a halo now, and this would but a subtle but serious tarnish that would never wash off. No massive up front damage but it would be the cusp, a point that would be hard to recover from.
Like the first point, there's also the general risk that someday Gabe isn't around to keep the ship pointed on the right direction. That they turn into a Nintendo, a company who never misses a chance to squander good will, to do the most MBA thing they can, that is as un-ppen as possible by design. See for example Nintendo's recent response to customers asking for some of the tariff refund money Nintendo is claiming.
I'm seriously considering one of the new Intel G3 handhelds as a desktop replacement. Consumer PC hardware has rocketed past anything I might actually use. I just don't need a desktop anymore.
Not really. Have their Valvr Index and rarely use it. But one base station started making loud noise after 2 weeks but still functional. I was too lazy to ask for replacement, but the other one quietly (pun intended) died and when I found out it was out of warranty. Later I learned that the basestations are infested with quality issues. Pretty bad taste for me.
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